


A Tatooine Rainstorm

by skatzaa



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Ghost(s), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa
Summary: Leia meets a ghost.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Shmi Skywalker
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	A Tatooine Rainstorm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CeruleanTactician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeruleanTactician/gifts).



> CeruleanTactician, I hope you enjoy! You had so many good prompts that it was hard to focus on just one. I think I actually ended up squashing two of them together anyway.

Leia stayed after Luke left to pick through the remains of his aunt and uncle’s house. He would need a moment to himself, she knew, to process being back here after so many years, and he hadn’t gotten that moment when she’d been helping him set the headstones for Owen and Beru. 

(There were no bones to bury; not after years in the desert. There hadn’t been bones before, either, when he’d stopped here briefly on the way to Jabba’s palace.)

They hadn’t used the Force to move the headstones—Luke, because he wanted to honor his family by his own hand, and Leia, because she wasn’t fully convinced she could reach the Force in the same way Luke did—and her sweat was still cooling on her skin in the growing chill of the evening. Though she’d been here before, Leia wasn’t sure she’d ever adjust to the extremes of the desert. 

She didn’t stay in front of Owen and Beru’s headstones. There were more, out here—Owen’s father, Luke had told her earlier, and Cliegg’s first wife. And Shmi. The mother of Anakin Skywalker. 

It was before Shmi’s resting spot that Leia hesitated. She did not have the same faith as Luke, the same bone deep certainty that Anakin Skywalker had been a good man. 

Vader had personally ruined the lives of so many people, and the Empire he had upheld had torn apart the galaxy. Leia couldn’t find forgiveness in herself for any of that, didn’t think that saving one person’s life was enough to atone for a lifetime of atrocities. And she knew Luke didn’t expect her to, either, but it stung a little to know _he_ could forgive so easily.

And Shmi Skywalker—the woman who had borne Anakin, had raised him in hardship and with love. What would she have thought of the man her son had become?

Luke had told her what little he’d known of Shmi—Beru hadn’t known if Shmi was born into slavery, or sold or stolen young. She’d known more about the years after Cliegg freed Shmi, when Beru and Owen had just begun their courtship, and that had comprised most of the stories Luke had passed on to Leia. 

But Beru’s family were freed slaves, and on Tatooine—that _meant_ something here. Beru had known the stories and the customs, and had told her nephew what she’d known of his father’s early life and his mother before him. 

And, of course, Luke had learned how his grandmother died, because the farmers taught their children young what it was to respect and fear the tuskens.

Leia stared at the worn sandstone grave marker, so worn in places by the winds and the sands that she couldn’t read the letters. 

“Anakin was the one who found me.”

She startled and whirled around, but there was no one there. She scanned the dunes and the blackened ruin of the homestead, still unclaimed after half a decade. Nothing. 

Had she imagined it?

Then, from behind her again: “Leia.”

Leia turned. 

There was a woman kneeling on the sand before the headstone, dressed in the same rough and undyed cloth Leia had grown accustomed to seeing here on Tatooine. Her sleeves and skirts were long, to protect her skin from the sands and wind, and her sleeves were loose, to keep her from overheating under the suns.

Her dark hair was braided and pinned, much more simply than Leia’s own, and her eyes were dark as well. 

“Who are–?” Leia started, but couldn’t finish. Luke had told her of Ben Kenobi, and then Yoda, his other teacher. She hadn’t quite believed him about the existence of ghosts, either, but the woman before her was _blue,_ and just transparent enough that Leia could see the headstone behind her. She said instead, “Shmi?”

The woman inclined her head and gestured with a hand to the stretch of sand in front of her. 

Leia had seen Luke meditating before, and so she sat, mimicking the way he folded his legs beneath him and kept his hands still in his lap. She was thankful she’d chosen to wear a more practical jumpsuit over the more ceremonial clothing that would have been fitting. 

“Anakin was the one who found me,” the woman, Shmi, said again. “When the tuskens took me. It was… very upsetting, for him.”

Leia can imagine. To see your mother die in front of you, with nothing you can do to stop it.

She can imagine it all too well. It had happened to her, too, her mother and her father and her entire planet, and Vader had just _stood_ there.

She opened her mouth, feeling sharp as glass, but Shmi held up a hand. She said, “I don’t say that to excuse anything he did. My son committed horrific acts, first in my name, and then, later, in Padmé’s. Nothing can excuse what he did to you, or the many others he brought harm to.”

Leia closed her eyes. It felt less like vindication she’d expected, to have Vader’s monstrous actions acknowledged and renounced by someone who loved him. But the flames of rage were still alight in her chest, and she didn’t want to extinguish them. Not when it was easier to be angry than to mourn.

“How is it that I can see you?” Leia asked, opening her eyes, instead of any of the things she could say—true or otherwise—in response to that. 

“I’m not sure,” Shmi says, gaze fixed on the horizon and the setting suns. “I met many holy people in my life, but I didn’t often have the chance to discuss philosophy with them. But as I understand it, Anakin would not have been as strong in the Force if I was not somewhat Force sensitive as well. Or perhaps it was the other way around—when I was pregnant, his Force sensitivity influenced my own.” She gave a little half-sigh, half-laugh. “Obi-Wan had many theories, but nothing concrete.”

“You knew Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Leia asked, surprised. “My father told me about him, but we never met.”

Shmi shook her head, smiling wistfully. “Only in death. He came to Tatooine with Luke when you were both very young, and then he went into the desert. He was mourning and looking for the spirit of someone else he had known. I would visit him occasionally, not that he was always receptive.”

Leia took a moment to digest that, staring at her shadow as it stretched out before her, cutting through Shmi’s insubstantial figure. 

She considered what it might’ve been like, having someone watching over her through her grief and anger over Alderaan’s destruction. She wondered if someone _had_ been watching over her. Luke had been short on details when she asked just how many Force ghosts there were.

“Did you ever visit Luke?”

“Occasionally.” Shmi’s gaze strayed to the homestead, where Luke had disappeared earlier. Leia wondered what he was doing, if the lower rooms were in better condition than the atrium, or if they had filled with sand and neglect. “He could see me when he was young, but as he grew, it happened less and less. Owen was very good at keeping his eyes fixed on the earth, and I’m afraid that habit rubbed off on Luke in all the wrong ways.”

Leia reached for something to say—and found nothing. She thought this should feel _bigger,_ to meet the long dead mother of her biological father, a woman she shared blood and bone with, but she just felt… strangely blank. 

At last, she settled on, “He’s very stubborn when he wants to be.”

Shmi laughed, as fleeting as a Tatooine rainstorm. Still smiling, she said, “Yes. He gets that from his mother.”

Not Anakin, but Padmé. The girl who was queen and senator and rallying cry for many in the Rebellion, before Alderaan.

“My parents both died,” Leia said, choosing her words as carefully as she would have on the Senate floor with enemies on all sides, “on Alderaan. Nearly all of my people—gone in an instant.” She stopped. Swallowed the grief and the rage that never died. “And Vader stood by and did nothing to stop it.”

“I know, dear one,” Shmi said, and reached out to take Leia’s hands. She almost expected to feel nothing, but Shmi’s hands were warm and solid and felt like the static that accumulated on an old datapad that had been left on for too long. 

Shmi squeezed, and Leia couldn’t help the laugh that tumbled out of her, high and incredulous. 

“I loved my son very much,” Shmi continued, softer now. In the dying light, she glowed more brightly. “I would have happily given my life for him. But I will never forgive him for all of the wrongs he committed, and I do not expect you to, either.” 

From a distance, Leia heard Luke call her name. 

Shmi squeezed her hands again and leaned closer. When she spoke her voice was little more than a whisper. “You grieve in your own way, as does Luke. Do not fault him for finding forgiveness, rather than rage, in his heart.”

She was fading as Luke’s voice grew closer. His footsteps barely made a sound over the sand. 

“You are strong, granddaughter mine. Have faith and trust those you love.” Shmi faded entirely from view, and her last words were little more than an impression on the wind. “All will be well.”

“Leia? Are you alright?” Luke said from behind her, confusion and concern wrapped up together within him. Leia didn’t question how she’d known that, just as she hadn’t questioned her unthinking ability to find him in Cloud City.

Perhaps this was the Force, she thought, rising to stand and turn to him. She reached out and looped her arm through Luke’s, let him tell her about what he’d found as they walked back to their ship. The Force didn’t have to be grand gestures or miraculous feats. Perhaps it was a matter of faith and determination.

Determination, at least, she had in spades. She could work on faith. And until then Luke had enough for the both of them.


End file.
